


Welcome to Korea

by abbiosity_mcmxciv



Series: Forged from Mud, Blood, and Gin [1]
Category: MASH (TV)
Genre: Camaraderie, Comfort, Episode: s04e01 Welcome to Korea, Fear, Friendship, Gen, War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-11
Updated: 2018-11-11
Packaged: 2019-08-22 04:16:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 627
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16590689
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/abbiosity_mcmxciv/pseuds/abbiosity_mcmxciv
Summary: One-shot from 'Welcome to Korea'. B.J.'s first experiences of war.Part of my series 'Forged from Mud, Blood, and Gin', exploring B.J. and Hawkeye's friendship.Obviously, I don't own the rights to the characters, episode, story etc.





	Welcome to Korea

Breathless and splattered head to toe in mud, BJ slithered to a stop and chucked the bag at Hawkeye. He was winded, bruised, and shaking, for shock, adrenalin, fear. The shells were still falling; every time one exploded, his heart leapt into his throat. He didn’t have time to be scared. He was an army doctor now. He had to help. The two injured men lay on the ground. Hawkeye and Radar knelt by one, treating his head wound. The other lay face down in the mud. Limp. His feet were turned inwards, the way Erin’s doll might have fallen. BJ reached to turn him over.

“That one’s had it” said Hawkeye, without looking up. BJ was shocked.   
“Well, let’s try!”   
They couldn’t just give up. Hawkeye sounded so indifferent. BJ swelled with anger. Why would they not try to save him? 

He pushed the young solider onto his side and saw what Hawkeye had seen. The boy’s body was ripped apart, his chest torn in half, the right side of his face blown off; what was left of his mouth stretched in a hideous grin. He could barely be eighteen. Just a kid. BJ felt his stomach twist and bile rose in his throat. Letting go of the body, which flopped horribly back into the mud, he lurched away. 

He threw up violently, into the scrubby bushes which lined the road. Heaving and retching and trembling. 

Radar looked over from the patient and nudged Hawkeye. Hawk sighed.  
“Radar, tie this tightly”   
He made his way over to BJ and crouched beside him. Grimacing, he put one hand on BJ’s clammy forehead, one on his back, and supported him as he retched and strained.   
This, thought Hawkeye bitterly, is a nice, straight, decent man. With a nice, normal life. With a wife and baby. Innocent and vulnerable. Who’s probably never even dreamt of horrors like these. Of young girls used as minesweepers; of children less valuable to their family than oxon; of snipers and shells; of young boys blown to pieces; of young men shot down before they could get home to their families. A nice man and he’d go back changed and twisted, like Trapper John or Hawkeye himself, with his dreams haunted by fear and death. Or worse still, he’d never go back at all. Well, he wasn’t going to see another Henry Blake. He’d take care of BJ. Fired with resolve, he bent his head and tightened his grip fiercely around the young man. 

The medic shouted for help. Straightening, Hawkeye offered BJ a grubby hand. BJ looked up, closed his eyes resignedly, and reached to take it with an equally filthy paw. Hawkeye grasped his arm and pulled him to his feet. 

BJ could never tell Hawkeye how much that touch had meant to him. How immeasurable had been the comfort of Hawk’s hand, holding his clammy forehead, pulling him out of the mud. Before that moment, BJ had felt totally alone, excluded from the comradeship between Radar and Hawkeye. They were bound by something he couldn’t understand, their terrible experiences, connected by a grief BJ couldn’t share. Hawkeye was polite but cold and distant and preoccupied. His best friend had gone and in his place had landed this naïve stranger. BJ was an outsider, plunged alone and unprepared into a nightmare. But now, in the touch of Hawkeye’s hand, BJ felt, whatever horrors he would have to face, he had someone there beside him.

They ran towards the shout, together now. An unspoken bond had been sealed between them. The bond that war cements between men in moments of raw emotion. 

“Don’t forget, this is only your first day at school. The worst part is, you’ll get used to all of this.”


End file.
